There are brilliant scholars and there are enthralling teachers. We want to help you merge these qualities. SemClass posts support the student/teacher relationship in ways that bring energy and expertise to both sides of the podium. »

From LMS to MOOC, the technology of teaching is changing faster than we can keep up. Once confident about our content, we are now being asked to present it in radical new ways. Do you need some support in this? Our SemTech bloggers can help. »

Loci is Latin for “localities” or “centers of focus.” It is shorthand for disciplines like comparative religions, theology, hermeneutics and history. We don’t all have the same AOC, and so SemLoci posts will touch on what is unique teaching your discipline. »

The world of higher academics is in flux. Private, public, and seminary institutions are remaking themselves. Studies about how and why students learn are transforming classrooms. Our SemTrends bloggers will help you stay on top of it. »

SemClass

There are brilliant scholars and there are enthralling teachers. We want to help you combine the two! SemClass posts support the student/teacher relationship in ways that bring energy and expertise to both sides of the podium.

For the face-to-face teacher and learner, entering the online teaching environment is a cross-cultural experience. It’s natural to try to hold on to the familiar, even when aware that this can interfere with a genuinely immersive, transformative experience of an unfamiliar environment. Find your points of discomfort, and ask questions (like those in this blog series) of instructors who already teach online….

Phenomenologists and narrative theorists note the importance of a horizon to learning – a not yet that beckons engaged, creative, responsible movement. Self-psychologist Heinz Kohut insists on “postponing closures” when interpreting any life experience, one’s own or on behalf of another person.

Learning has more room to move and breathe when a learning process yields to an open future, leaving room to move discourses, interpretations, theological claims, and processes of becoming into a life’s vocation…

Hinge moments often evoke dislocation, opening certainties and unfolding more multidimensional possibilities to what appeared to be smoothed out maps. For theological educators trained to map a place in a field, carve out a scholarship domain, advance a particular line of thought, maps and map-making are key vocational tools to meet the dislocations that new questions of hinge moments propose….

Now, we should never encourage procrastination. Nor should we commend the practice of cramming in library late nights right before a paper deadline. But often, faculty expect students to make time only during the day (AKA: during our office hours). Normally, this is reasonable. But when do you think students are doing most of their work on their papers? (When did you do most of your work on your papers?) It’s at night, when they can focus more, and yet faculty are nowhere to be seen. I’ll bet if you surveyed your students, over eighty percent of work on term papers is done during the evenings on the week the paper is due.

If your students are doing their work in the evenings leading up to the due date, why not be available to help them then?

Like many theological educators, my education in divinity school and doctoral work was in traditional classroom formats. I attended residential institutions, spent hours in stacks with physical books and their distinct smells, and daily conversed with students and professors in hallways that connected one classroom to another….

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